


Dead names

by Aamukaste



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Gen, unresolved issues are unresolved, we don't believe in Cursed Child on this hill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23762983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aamukaste/pseuds/Aamukaste
Summary: Albus and Scorpius talk about names of the dead. Well, one of them does.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Dead names

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Имя мёртвого](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/608914) by Aamukaste. 



> It's a translation of an old work of mine. Alright, this was written three darn years ago and no, I haven’t read the Cursed Child still. Today, I was feeling especially shitty and it caught my gaze, so here. Am I projecting anything on the characters? Perhaps so. Am I going to stop? Watch me do exactly the opposite. Why did I use an exerpt from a Chinese poem in a HP drabble? Well, it made sense at the time...  
> Also, it took me an impossible amount of time to hunt down the actual poem I used in the end, because I had to reverse engineer it from Russian all the way back to Tang dynasty Chinese, because I am shit at keeping track of that stuff, so pity me :D

“Do you know what’s it like to bear a dead person’s name?” Al asks looking at nothing in particular.

Scorpius rolls his eyes.

Al is in desperate need of someone who he would be able to share with without worrying about being misunderstood or rejected.

James wears his names proudly, and Lily keeps such a tight lid on things she might burst before she lets any of the doubts out. Al needs a friendly shoulder to lean on, preferably, outside of his gigantic family because he needs a reassurance that the world, the real world out there, would accept him for what he is.

Scorpius Malfoy is not a suitable person for such caress. But he is the only one Al’s got.

“What do they want from me? One of those people turned Dad into a weapon,” Al’s voice is low, but even (the sound of hours of repetition behind it). “And the other, Scorpius, the other betrayed the woman he loved. A “hero” with his own agenda and a hero-traitor.”

Al is such a drama queen. It’s understandable, considering the number of similar ones around them.

Scorpius gasps, the sound overly theatrical, his expression the perfect picture of someone scandalized deeply. But he isn’t able to keep it for long. The mask melts off his face like heated wax.

“Don’t expect sympathy from me,” Scorpius says dryly. “The fact that your parents bestowed all their hopes for a better future onto you is not a tragedy that can touch me.”

His cheekbone is blooming with colour. Yesterday he got into a fight with one of the Scamander twins. Not the first time they clashed, but usually, their bickering had more needling than anger.

Yesterday Lorcan called Scorpius’ father a coward.

It was enough.

“I bear a name,” Scorpius says, shifting to stand right in front of Al and meeting his gaze squarely, unyieldingly, sharply, “of a Death Eater.”

He looks straight into the other’s eyes, and they are so foreign at the moment it’s almost unbearable.

“My family housed Voldemort, quite literally,” Scorpius continues, it’s dry like a fact that everyone should have long since made their peace with. “My great-aunt was ecstatic over that freak. My Grandfather, the father of my father, was so scared of that miserable bastard that he made his own son face the horror of it. I bear his family name, the blood in my veins is his blood. Their blood. Do you know what’s that like?”

Anger is boiling in Scorpius continuously. It has been ever since the age he started to realise that Father wasn’t almighty and fearless. It happened early on, but he had never spoken of it before.

Even now, he looks right into his friend’s eyes and he doesn’t know if he is capable of finding the right words. The correct words. If he is capable of ever speaking about the misery, the anguish that grips him tightly, head to toe.

About the unbearable shame that, like the deepest abyss of the ocean, pulls him down, whenever anyone speaks up about the war.

About the fact that Lucius’ name is an unspoken ghost in their house, and the only portrait of his is in Father’s study, behind a spelled lock at all times.

About Father screaming in night, plagued by nightmares.

About children of those who survived, of those who won, that never tire from reminding him of his family’s misdeeds, the horrors they brought, when Scorpius wasn’t even an idea, not even _an existing thought_.

About himself and the way he feels that every sharp word is a punishment for the sins of his father and grandfather, and he meets those squarely, head high, because he thinks them fair.

Children of the heroes with their inferiority complexes. What would they know about the way it feels to bear the name of the dead? To not have a hero? To live in the house of a coward who brought evil to his own doorstep?

Father gave Scorpius a name according to the traditions of the Blacks. And not because he held his mother’s memory in such a high regard, but because he didn’t have a hero. He did not have anyone who would have given him hope, who he would have wanted to remember after that terrible war.

“What do I know about bearing a name of the dead? A name of a traitor?” Scorpius grips his fists tightly, but despite his best efforts the words sound bitter and angry. “I happen to know a bit! So, don’t look for support in me, Potter. Do not.”

The silence that settles over them afterwards is sobering.

They stay there looking at each other, stances unchanging.

*

_Thousands of years later, when our merits and failures are no longer known and our rights and wrongs are no longer felt, who will still remember our honour and our shame? (Intended Elegy – Tao Yuanming)_

**Author's Note:**

> The original exerpt:  
> 得失不复知，是非安能觉！  
> 千秋万岁后，谁知荣与辱？  
> (拟挽歌辞三首 - 陶渊明)  
> Obviously, there might be variations to interpret it. 辱 actually means disgrace, but I’ve been stuck on the word shame for years.
> 
> You can find me being weird on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/zhongmukuikui) or [Tumblr](https://yuncifang.tumblr.com/) and message for a chat~


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